Just a swipe or two away from Lord Grantham entitlement

By Matt Haber

July 2, 2015

One of my favorite cassettes when I was a kid (yes, cassette, look it up) was a compilation by the Bay Area punk outfit Dead Kennedys titled “Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death.” I think of that title often when I’m walking around San Francisco these days, almost as often as I think of DK’s “Plastic Surgery Disasters” when I’m in Los Angeles.

We’re in a very “Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death” moment right now, and it’s only getting more convenient by the day. We’re less than a decade into the smartphone’s incursion in our lives, and yet we’re relying on it more and more to do the most basic things. As even your mom knows, there’s an app for anything you need done. All you have to do is share your credit card info, your location and barely swipe a finger the length of your phone’s touchscreen to get any goods or services on demand.

Need a ride? Can’t park your own car? Have a pile of dirty laundry? Need a new look? Gotta mail a package? Want your luggage packed and shipped? Looking for someone to cuddle? All of this, and myriad other tiny tasks and pleasures we used to tackle with little or no fuss can be outsourced. Behind each app, it seems, is a person who can do what you need done seamlessly and without so much as asking you for a glass of water. Suddenly, anyone (even the lowliest freelance journalist) can feel like Lord Grantham on “Downton Abbey.” Your very own valet, chef and footman are just a swipe away, no bell-ringing required.

I probably could’ve used an app to find someone to write this very column. And you, dear reader, could have found someone to summarize it for you and compose your tweet or letter to the editor. (You might also want to find someone to copy edit them while you’re at it.) Frankly, I don’t know why we’re wasting our time here: We could be ordering clothes chosen by a virtual stylist to be sent to our house or having the same package repacked and shipped away by some helpful stranger.

Honestly, though: Are either of us really that busy? If you’re an ER doctor on her 35th hour of rotation or a new parent, then, sure, you probably are, but then why are you reading this anyway? Try that column summarizer app; it saves you countless seconds.

Many of the venture capital-backed time-saving and outsourcing technologies currently being developed by the greatest minds in the Bay Area (who are taking an ever-greater share of the greatest neighborhoods) seem designed to free us up to … focus more on technology. Something is rotten in the state of California when twentysomethings are hiring out their laundry and grocery shopping so that they can focus more on their dating profiles. (Also, did you know you can outsource the writing and vetting of dating profiles? True fact.)

If people were using these apps to free themselves to take language classes, volunteer, catch up on sleep or spend time with their families that would be one thing, but the tiny sliver of time taken up by packing one’s own bag is just re-absorbed into more time spent on e-mail and social media. We’re saving time to waste time.

Another problem created by these outsourcing apps is a spike in our Gross National Entitlement. We’re asking (or, more often “demanding”) people to do everything for us while offering no more thanks than a five-star review and a positive iTunes review. At least Lord Grantham occasionally thanked his staff with a nice handwritten note or the hand of one of his daughters.

Whether we know it or not, these apps are turning us into sullen teenagers who won’t clean our rooms, do our chores or look people in the eye. You can see the entitlement these apps and services are creating in the generation of San Franciscans who don’t bother to give up their seats on BART, refuse to bus their tables at the burrito place, leave their towels on the floor at the gym, and barely look up from their phones when ordering a coffee. When an at-home massage is a swipe away, why wouldn’t a barista seem like a mere carbon-based app that delivers coffee to your face? People, and their need for a living wage and basic dignity, become just another pain point between you and your frictionless transaction.

I don’t know you, but I do know that you’re better than this. Your mother taught you to say “thank you,” and you once knew how to clean your toilet bowl — or at the very least wipe the seat with a piece of toilet paper once in a while. There are tasks I don’t enjoy, like putting away groceries, cleaning the drain catch in the shower, or smiling, but I do them because they’re mine to do. In other words, they’re my responsibility.

In the end, that may be the thing these apps are letting us all avoid: being responsible. You know who doesn’t have any responsibilities and lives only for convenience? Children. And Lord Grantham. You wouldn’t want to be either of them, would you?

Matt Haber is a San Francisco freelance writer and the former New Guy. E-mail: style@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @matthaber